We never go on a walking tour, but today we did. Pablo was very entertaining as he led us with his pink umbrella through the tall and narrow streets of Western Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited city. These streets were so designed to keep the uncomfortable weather away both providing nearly continuous shade from the fiery sun and protection from southern Spain’s mighty winds.

As he informed us that Cadiz had one of the world’s first Constitution based on rights, freedom and democracy, a passing Flamenco-dressed woman posed for eager cameras as she became an accidental highlight of an already interesting tour. Passing a tiny lane I saw the name ‘duende’ which Pablo described as ‘elf-like’. To me, ‘duende’ was a special state achieved in Flamenco dancing, and he agreed, pointing out that they are both magical states.

You could tell he loved his home and treated us like close family including each of us with his gaze and reaching all of us with his voice. He showed off his eclectic cathedral made up of a mixture of baroque, rococo and neo-classical styles, mainly because it took so long to build. He took us into a Roman theatre, once one of the largest in the Roman Empire, where he sat us down as though we were the audience, and some of us were close to that age.

The tour continued into a large plaza but a large gathering was cheering nearby. I looked around to see that Flamenco woman making the overhead grey clouds look mild in comparison to what she was doing. She ended her dance, walked to her change room (beside a pillar in the square) took off her dress, put on another one, inhaled something, took a huge swig of water, sprinkled some on her hair, shook her head around, put a scarf round her shoulders, a flower in her hair and began to dance. This could have been ‘duende’.

Another change of clothes and similar procedure to before, and she was off again. This time she walked over and led a woman with a disability on to the square, providing her with a chair, and they danced together. Like a conductor, the chairwoman waved her walking stick to the music, as her feet and eyes danced with new found energy, a wonderful sight. The Flamenco dancer, exhausted, finished, picked up her money hat and walked among the onlookers chatting and posing for photos.

But she hadn’t finished, she had one more unexpected, non-funded performance left. A young woman deposited her father into another chair and must have asked her to dance with him. This man could not move anything much except his expressions as he sat and she danced for him alone. He had tears on his face, and she wept with him as she draped her scarf around his shoulders, held his face in her hands, and sat on his lap while never really stopping dancing. I think this was ‘duende’ the elf, at work.